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Archive For October, 2012

Halfway up the mountain, I hear trumpets in the distance. The monastery must be close now! Just over an hour later, I finally reach the gate – exhausted but cleansed. Prepared to see the temple.

I have finally figured out The Bhutan Code. If you book a trip here, pay close attention to your itinerary. Chances are it’ll be filled with phrases like, “visit the monastery,” “view the Himalayan peaks,” and “see the stupa.” These all mean the same thing – climb the mountain to the monastery, climb the mountain to view the peaks, climb the mountain to see the stupa. Once in a while you’ll mix it up by climbing six or seven flights of stone stairs instead. And it’s not over when you think it’s over. You’ll take an “easy walk” up the hill to your hotel. Then four or five flights of stairs and/or ladders to your room. Want breakfast? Six sets of stone steps to that building on the hill behind you.

Going to Bhutan? Hit the stair mill at the gym. Now. Seriously.

Luckily, I was training for a trek and even managed to climb to the famous Taktshang (Tiger’s Nest) Monastery, 900m up a cliff, in less than two hours. Your time may vary. 😉

That climb topped off a trip that included:

Yak Day – I saw my first yak, tried yak cheese and yak butter tea, and survived Bhutan’s version of the Death Road, which almost made me yak even though I’ve never been car sick in my life.

An “easy walk” to the Chimi Lhakhang temple, only to learn that it’s a pilgrimage site where the childless come to get blessings of fertility. Um. Yeah. No thanks. I skipped that blessing. The Divine Madman, Lama Drukpa Kunley, to whom this temple is dedicated, is the reason you see penises painted on and hanging from homes all over Bhutan. He’s known for subduing the demons with his phallus. The subtle misogyny underlying his popularity is a topic for another post, for sure.

Overall, Bhutan is like a carousel. No surprises (once you’ve learned the code), just extreme homogeneity and a quiet serenity that’s more than a bit disconcerting to me, since I come from a culture that values diversity – and the chaos that can come with it – so highly. I’ll save that discussion for later though. For now I’m back on the adrenaline rush roller coaster that is Nepal, and I’ll admit to breathing a bit of a sigh of relief at the beautiful unpredictability of it all.

I sense a colorful rickshaw coming at me from behind as a weaving motorbike barrels straight toward me, and a dusty, white car eases past all of us while laying on the horn as if there was a chance in hell that we could get out of the way. I calmly step to the left, then forward and a bit to my right, confident that I can straddle the smelly water in the gutter without falling in. It’s my second full day in Thamel, and I’m becoming comfortable with the chaos.

I dance with the crowd, anticipating their moves as they anticipate mine. I easily sidestep spit from the shopkeepers hustling their wares or the equally dangerous splash from their occasional halfhearted attempts to wash the spit away. I’ve learned to keep a sixth sense focused on the uneven ground in front of me, while my other senses are fully engaged in keeping me alive. The similarities between walking in Thamel and driving on a Los Angeles freeway are striking. So are the differences. Overwhelmed at first, I soon find myself entering a kind of meditative state in which I move by instinct and trust in those around me. The crowd becomes one. We all move as a single organism – and it works.

Suddenly, the smell of raw meat from a small, open window low to the ground stops me in my tracks. I look around. Meat, fruit, vegetables, used cooking pots, clothes, rice, and live chickens splashing in the mud puddles at my feet have replaced the knock-off trekking gear, singing bowls, and Buddha statuettes of the tourist district. I am fabulously, deliciously lost.

I’ve stumbled on the local market in the part of town where there are homes instead of guesthouses, where the shopkeepers, hotel workers, and their families live, love, and play. I spend a couple of hours “lost” there, taking it all in. I don’t take out my camera, not even once. It feels too invasive here. Instead, I just talk to people. It’s a wonderful day.

Tomorrow I leave for Bhutan. I expect a very different experience from the chaos of Kathmandu, but I know where expectations lead. I’m ready to see how the next 9 days unfold, and to experience whatever chaotic serendipity comes my way. I am comfortable being uncomfortable. It’s just what I do.

I’m boarding a plane to Bhutan and reposting a timeless favorite – to shoot (photos) or not to shoot…that is the eternal question.

There’s no denying that visual images are powerful tools for a design ethnographer to have at her disposal. Seeing the childlike joy on a grown man’s face as he opens a box containing his new toy, hearing fear in the quivering voice of a woman who just received a diagnosis of a chronic illness, watching an artist focus on each brushstroke – these moments bring our clients on the journey with us. They see what we saw, feel the emotions that we felt, hear what we heard. It’s easy to be drawn into the world of the visual, and over the course of my career I’ve had to become somewhat of a videographer and a photographer as well as an ethnographer. I’ve learned to shoot and edit and create a story that remains true to the voices of the people who allowed me to share their world for a few hours, a day, or a week.

But there’s a flip side to the camera. Clients and ethnographers alike can fall into the trap of conflating experience with the representation of that experience. The camera can create an emotional connection, but it is also selective. It’s a particular gaze, one that is narrow, limited, and defining. We can get caught up in capturing the perfect shot and find ourselves thinking far too early about how we’re going to convey the experience rather than simply…experiencing.

Ultimately, the ethnographer is still the research instrument. Technology has advanced and perhaps the thought of writing field notes “old school” makes us smile a little, shake our heads, and wonder how we ever got through those years. But the truth is that we would all benefit from putting the camera down once in a while. I recently had a project in which a highly unusual number of participants declined to be videotaped or photographed. Although that was important data in itself, it also opened up a new world to me – or more accurately, it reminded me of the world from which I had come. After years of relying on visual documentation as a way of both capturing “what really happened” and sharing that experience with others, the intellectual knowledge that the camera only captures the data I choose became embodied reality again. I remembered that all representations of “reality” are partial.

The camera’s gaze is my gaze, yes, but the viewfinder is a narrow perspective indeed.

Putting down the camera opened up my field of vision. I suddenly saw those details that I realized I’d started to miss. There was no awkward fumbling, getting that great action shot, or making sure the camera wasn’t moving during a really good quote. The fieldwork felt more natural. I realized I was feeling their emotions in a way that had started to fade over time. I had been feeling in inverse proportion to the increased resolution of my HD cameras. Now, I could just BE with the participant and experience their day with them, and in the end my analysis didn’t miss the big picture in favor of the perfect shot. I’ve missed that.

Near the end of the project, a friend – who will be traveling to Tanzania with me soon – expressed his concern about getting stuck behind the camera. This was my response:

Photos are great to trigger memories, but the memories are what will last. The vibe, smells, feelings, emotions from seeing the world – and NOT through a camera lens. That’s what you’ll treasure.

My most powerful memories are moments that are NOT captured on film – rounding a corner in the Andes in the pouring rain after hiking for four days and seeing two dogs look up at me with blood all over their faces. It took me a second to register that they were eating a dead horse that slid off the trail just a few hours earlier. The exhaustion and hypothermia and raw emotion of that scene could NEVER be caught on film, and stopping to pull my camera out of my backpack would have ruined the sheer primal power of that moment. I just froze – and rather than run, the dogs returned to their meal. I watched in horror for a few seconds, then put one foot in front of the other, continuing my journey up the mountain.

Watching a pregnant elephant that we saw one day in Hwange, Zimbabwe return the next day to introduce her brand new pink baby to the herd for the first time was awe inspiring. The photos I took don’t begin to do the scene justice – the baby doesn’t even look pink. But the memory hasn’t faded. To see the pink elephant you had to be there, fully in the moment, paying attention. By the time I got the settings on my camera adjusted properly the baby was gone, surrounded by the herd shielding her to protect her from our curious stares. Those stuck behind their lenses missed the pink elephant completely.

Tthe 16 ft crocodile in Guatemala that was sunning itself as we paddled by two feet away, the feel of class V rapids tumbling over you when you’re sucked into a hole and can’t breathe, the random reggae band that was playing at a roadside guesthouse in Zimbabwe in the middle of nowhere, or just the absolute peace of cracking open a Bollinger’s on an African sundowner as a herd of cape buffalo rumble past you.

Just be sure you put the camera down and EXPERIENCE it all. I’ve found it helpful to leave the camera in the tent or room for a game drive or outing or two. It’s a totally different experience without it, and extremely valuable. It will also help you take better shots. You’ll become more selective and purposeful and you’ll really see the scene in context before you hit that button. I have zero technical skill, but the camera becomes an extension of my gaze – not a replacement for it – and that makes all the difference.

Remember, the camera is just one of many possible tools to tell a story. But the storyteller is always YOU.

After a very long 2 1/2 day series of flights – Los Angeles to Seoul to Bangkok to Kathmandu – I’m here!

For now, I’ve chosen Thamel Eco Resort as my home base hotel. I leave for 9 days in Bhutan on Thursday.

I always learn from travel, and I’ve already learned a thing or two on this trip:

1. Always book your own hotels, even if it seems more convenient to have the agency book it for you just this one time. They will get you the worst room at the most jacked up tourist price. You can always do better on your own.

2. The Bangkok airport is fascinating at 4am.

3. Solar Oil saves your cuticles from the dry air of airplanes and altitude. Ask your manicurist or get it at a beauty supply store. Don’t accidentally pack it in your checked bag.

4. Solo travel can be lonely. Breakfast was nice, and I met a few other travelers who were alone at the moment, but joining tour groups later today. I had some nice conversations until their tour leader arrived and activities started. Then I ceased to exist as they went about doing what they paid to do, and getting to know one another. It’s very quiet here now.

5. I can blog from my iPhone! This is a total experiment, so I apologize in advance for the inevitable glitches. Pretty cool though.

I’ll be wandering Thamel today, probably camera-less, just soaking it all in. I like to spend my first day (after sleeping 16 hours) just feeling out the vibe of a city. Later, I’ll make plans and See Things. For now, I’ll just Be Here.

It came up so fast – tomorrow I board a Thai Airways flight to Bangkok, then on to Kathmandu to begin the adventure! Thing is, it’s not the adventure I’ve been sharing with you for the last several months. At all. I stopped sharing because, quite frankly, I had no idea what to say. I’m still coming to terms with my feelings about how this trip has evolved, and I swing from hating every second and wanting to cancel it to knowing that once I get there, it will be overwhelmingly, jaw-dropping amazing and I will forget that it’s not the trip I planned.

Expectations are dangerous. And painful. They truly are the cause of our suffering. I expected to go to Everest. I expected to see Nepal, Bhutan, and maybe even Tibet with a friend. I expected to be perfectly healthy and in great shape by now.

Expectations suck. They can be shattered.

Here are the highlights, the pieces I can put together and make some sort of sense of at this point.

The Trek

I wanted to go to Everest Base Camp. I’ve always wanted to go. Wade Davis, my first inspiration to become an ethnographer, recently wrote a book about Everest. Talking with him about his experiences at a lecture at the Bowers Museum back in March just sparked the fire. I was going to do it!

I psyched myself up for it, told all my friends and family, and even blogged about it. I trained hard – but wait. Something was wrong. I was getting short of breath, light-headed, and even passing out on training hikes that were a bit challenging, but should have been easy for me. They weren’t easy. I thought my asthma was acting up again. So I went to my primary care doctor, who sent me on to a cardiologist.

The good news is, I don’t have asthma! The bad? Asthma was a misdiagnosis from way back when. What I do have is two different congenital heart defects. They’re minor, but for some reason that we still don’t understand I also have mild pulmonary hypertension which is causing my symptoms and is likely related. My western doctors have been great at doing tests, and more tests, and more tests, and fine-tuning the diagnosis. We are still in that process, and I still need more tests when I get home. However, they have done NOTHING to address the shortness of breath and dizziness while exercising. Zero.

I did find a wonderful acupuncturist and specialist in Chinese Medicine, Michael Vercos at Pacific Bay Integrative Health Centerin Santa Monica. Between the herbs and the acupuncture, my cardio world has changed. I never realized how it really felt to run – I never knew I shouldn’t be gasping for air, feeling faint, and getting a migraine a few hours later like clockwork. With his treatment, I am improving. However, I am still far from normal.

Because of this, I know I will be slower than the rest of the group at high altitude – and maybe even at lower altitude. I thought it was best to be honest with the trekking company, and perhaps hire an extra porter/guide to stay with me if I ended up being too slow, so I didn’t hold up the group. Nobody wants to be That Person, but since I knew there was a chance, I thought I’d be prepared.

Big mistake. Huge. Ethics suck.

Although they were very polite about it, the trekking agency made it clear that they really didn’t want me on the Everest Base Camp trek. They gave me the choice, but the tone was clear – if I chose to go, they would consider me a liability from Second One. I felt like I wasn’t wanted. I was devastated. I don’t feel like it would have been fun to go where I’m not wanted, and where everyone immediately considers me a pain in the ass. Hiring an extra porter wasn’t an option they really wanted to offer. Instead, they offered to switch me to another trek – Annapurna Sanctuary – which is lower altitude, and well within an altitude I have successfully tackled before. I switched. I want to hike with people who want me hiking with them. So. Annapurna Sanctuary, it is.

Another issue with the switch is that it’s a shorter trek. This has pros and cons. The main pro is that China is not issuing Tibet Permits in October. The shorter trek leaves me a potential window if they begin issuing them again in November, so it’s possible I can still make that work. We’ll see. The cons are numerous, from the disappointment to having to pay for an extra week’s lodging in Kathmandu at the end, which was still cheaper than changing my flight date. In the end, what should have been the less expensive trek ended up costing me more. I’m hoping to make good use of that time though, trying to get a Tibet Permit, or perhaps traveling to the south, or even just to Bhaktapur or some such place. I’ll make the best of it. But dealing with logistical changes and even a slightly different gear list has left me scrambling and stressed out rather than truly excited.

The Solo Travel

Then there was another change in plans. Although she didn’t plan to trek with me, a friend was supposed to join me for the first part of my trip. We were going to travel to Nepal together, then on to either Tibet or Bhutan, then I would return for the trek. A few weeks ago, she learned she was unable to go and she had to cancel. So here I am, traveling solo yet again. Now, for the record, I’m used to traveling alone. I enjoy it to an extent, and there are definite benefits. But this time, I was looking forward to company for at least part of the trip. I was still able to go to Bhutan, but as most of you reading this are probably aware, single supplements are the solo traveler’s punishment. For what, I’m not sure. For being too much of a loser to have a travel partner? Whatever. What it means is that Bhutan cost me twice as much as it would have in a group of two. Not a surprise, just yet another disappointment.

I was excited again when it seemed I might be able to connect with another friend who is traveling solo in Asia right now, but it turned out she’s arriving in Kathmandu the day after I leave for Bhutan, and she’ll be moving on before I return. I won’t see her either.

So. Solo it is. Story of my life.
At this point, with the flight tomorrow morning, I’m trying to get back in the game and remind myself that this is the beauty of travel. It always changes. The path you take is never the path you expected to take, and those detours are what make the memories. Like taking the Lares Trail when the Inca Trail permits were sold out, and meeting only locals along the way – no other trekking groups for days! Instead, we met farmers and herders who shared their lives, stories, and homes with us. Or driving from Victoria Falls back to Bulawayo in Zimbabwe, and running into a random guesthouse on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, where we ate the best french fries in the world as a local reggae band started an impromptu party that mesmerized us into dancing for hours. Or taking a standard wine tasting tour in Stellenbosch, South Africa that unexpectedly ended with Mark Bilton of Bilton Wines inviting all of us back to his home for a tasting in his private cellar. Fabulous wines, by the way! Get your hands on them if you can!

It’s the moments you DON’T plan that are the best moments. The real moments. Life.